Coronado Speed Festival 2012

There’s one way to make a car show better, and that’s to have a race, and the only possible way to improve on that? Have the whole thing at a Naval Base as part of San Diego Fleet Week.

Held every year on Coronado Island at the Naval Air Station, The Coronado Speed Festival turns the Navy runway in to a racetrack and invites more than 200 vintage racecars to squeal tires and scare the sailboat crowd out in the bay. The result is a series of races from old stock cars to Can-Am to Trans-Am with dozens of vintage engines screaming around the corners while Navy fighter planes perform flybys above. It’s good stuff.

Vintage racing frowns on full contact, understandable when the cars involved are the actual machines wrenched on and wheeled by such legendary names as Smokey Yunick, Mark Donohue and Dale Earnhardt. The cars may not be beatin’ and bangin’ but they sure are racing. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Hinchliff/Ross Mustang sideways on the last turn heading in to the straight-away with the famed lime green #77 Dodge Challenger hot on its tail. Warning, your ears might bleed but it’s worth it.